


You Are...

by owlbsurfinbird



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Community: lewis_challenge, Fluff, Hideous 70s Fashion, International Fanworks Day 2015, Lamentable 70s Music, M/M, Spiders, empowerment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 07:54:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3349493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlbsurfinbird/pseuds/owlbsurfinbird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The seventies. In all its hideous glory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Are...

"I thought James might like to see the photo albums," said Lyn, putting a dusty storage box on the coffee table. A small spider crawled out of the box and toppled onto the table.

James nudged Robbie's hand, not saying a word.

Lyn blew the spider onto the floor where it began to make its way to James's shoe.

The pressure of James's fingers on Robbie's arm grew harder.

Robbie reached over and deflected the arachnid's trajectory as casually as he could. Lyn would've insisted on carrying the creature out the door and depositing it in the garden if she knew of James' phobia.

There would be time enough later on for her to learn all of James' little quirks. Not that the lass didn't have a few of her own. 

Robbie knew that momentary lapse in attention had cost him dearly though when he saw that Lyn had brought out a huge photo album with a fluorescent green fabric cover sprinkled with large white daisies.

The album from hell. The seventies. In all its hideous glory.

It was the photo album every kid longed to have of their parents. The one with the Mum in clothes that were too short, too revealing and too fashionable back in their day. The kind of clothing that one forbids a daughter to wear to school or in public. Or ever, really.

And Lyn was intimately familiar with every single faded Polaroid color shot in the damn thing.

Including the photos of her dad.

With a huge grin, she presented the album to James and sat next to him so that she could gauge his reaction.

James crossed a leg, opening the album. Photos were held in place on the white pages with a yellowed sheet of thin plastic.

_Didn't look bad in my twenties,_ Robbie admitted to himself, watching James flip slowly through his past. _Played in a band, got the girls. Well, one or two. And then Val._ There was a photo of him in a Rolling Stones T-shirt, the one with the huge lolling tongue, and he had his tongue hanging out, too, mocking the camera. The black shirt made him look buff and muscled. The jeans were belled at the bottom, topped with a wide, tooled leather belt at his waist. He was leaning against a wall outside of a pub.

He looked—bitchin'.

James must have realized that he was staring at the photo too long, and flipped the page.

"Is this—you?" James's voice was incredulous. He was jabbing the image with a long index finger.

Lyn was laughing, as expected.

"Yeah, and before you ask, that was real fur on that coat collar."

"Wondered if it was still alive as the photo was being taken. Family pet, maybe."

"All the rage back then. Fur collars on coats. Like the striped trousers? Those were always good for a laugh at Lyn's slumber parties. She'd drag out the album and say, 'Yeah, my dad's a copper now, but when he was our age he was a proper clown.'"

"I never said that!"

"Did. Your mum told me. Go on, show James the picture—you know the one I mean."

Lyn paged past the more embarrassing photos of Robbie—good thing, too—but she had a glint in her eye as if she'd go back. She must have seen through his tactic. The picture of her mum was at the back of the album and it wasn't one of his favorites at all. Still, he wasn't expecting that pang of emotion—love and loss—that hit him as he looked at Val.

She was sixteen, a photo taken with friends. He remembered her telling him that her mother had forbidden her to wear clothes like that. Her hair was long, parted in the middle. Too late to be a Flower Child, she was emulating the look: her eyes were hugely made up, no lipstick, leather jacket with long fringe—borrowed, he guessed. Because she was wearing a bare mid-riff top, no bra, and a long skirt. Granny skirts, she said they were called.

Hardly looked like anyone's gran.

He sighed. She'd kept the photo because the expression on her face was triumphant. In that moment, she had broken all of the rules set down by her mum and every rule she carried in her head.

_I am woman hear me roar._

_Big hit, back in the day._

Lyn got up suddenly, disappeared down the hall.

"Is this too much for you?" James' voice was soft, the pressure against Robbie's side was comforting, grounding.

Robbie shook his head. "Better than pictures of me naked on a bear skin rug."

"You have one of those?" The corner of james' mouth quirked up.

Robbie loved that little curl, just on the end of Jame' lip. He kissed him—quickly, though he wanted more. It was late: Tim and Jack were asleep. It had been a long day. But he felt like they needed this time together, just the three of them, for this particular visit.

He and James had come up as a couple several times for holidays over the years, of course. Like an old married couple, Lyn joked.

Except now, they were going to get married. Not a big ceremony or anything, they'd told her, just a formalization of what they had. Mainly for legal reasons, James explained to her.

"Then we have to do all the traditional rituals," Lyn said. "You'll have to ask me for his hand, James."

"May I have all of him, please?" James bowed over her hand, kissed in, and held it close to his heart.

"Granted." Lyn kissed his cheek. "And you better make him happy."

"I've made it my life's work."

"He's doing a damn good job of it, too, pet. No complaints here."

"Right. Then we need—the albums."

"Music?"

"Photo. Then music."

Robbie sighed. They'd been looking at the photo albums for nearly an hour. Didn't have many pictures of himself as a boy—people didn't take a lot of photos back then. Too expensive. Family portraits, school pictures. Maybe one or two at a birthday party.

But by the 70s, everyone had instamatic cameras. Paul Simon had even written a song about it: Kodachrome. Gimme those nice bright colors.

"Look at those bell bottom trousers," James said. "Flashy white leather belt. And a gold-colored jacket with—is that piping on the lapels?"

Robbie nodded. "Polyester. My best clothes. I was going to a job interview." He remembered wearing those colors and sweating in a too hot, too small office, and a man shaking his hand as he left. He had apologized for having wet, sweaty hands, apologized for being so nervous. "Clothes didn't breathe at all. Used to worry that someone would light a match near me and all those plastic fibers would melt."

"I'll bet this Madras plaid jacket was cooler."

"I liked the colors in the plaid. The blues," Robbie said softly. "I have a tie like that."

"I know." James had the oddest expression on his face, as if these memories were rare gifts.

_Suppose they are, after a fashion._

There was a photo of him on a motorcycle with wild hair, tight jeans, a chambray workshirt embroidered with a rainbow across the yoke.

_I'm grinning because I was pissed out of my mind,_ Robbie thought. _Nearly killed myself riding that day, too. Tore up that shirt, my jeans. Came home past curfew, bloody. But alive. Waited all of two weeks before I did it again._

"That's prophetic—the rainbow," quipped James. He's examining the photo with a copper's eyes and Robbie knows he can tell Robbie is plastered. But nothing is said.

_Hell, Lyn's a nurse, she can probably tell, too._

There are pictures of his school, his mates. The girls are either starched and proper or trashy looking. The backdrops are sad, dystopian, bleak, and grey. These photos are in black and white. A mate with a camera and darkroom. Robbie remembered cautioning him later when he was a copper working Vice. Man said he was creating art.

Robbie said a photo of a man with another man's cock in his mouth was not so much art as porn. Especially when one man looked barely of age.

He really didn't want to think about that right now. Sexual revolution, the old friend said. Ten years later the friend was dead. AIDS.

"The worst part about the seventies is everything." Robbie flips past photos of people who were so important to him then—what was his name? What was hers? They had gone to a concert together. So important at the time, now barely remembered. "There weren't any good movies or music."

"Bowie," said James. "Elton John."

"Aside from your rock god, there wasn't much else. Disco. Lousy time to be a young man. Missed out on the Sixties--"

"I don't think you missed out on all of the things that mark the Sixties," James said knowingly.

Robbie shrugged. "It was a terrible era. Unemployment. Three day work week. Christ, I don't know how we made it through. And instead of inspiring music—"

"Dad, have you started your rant?" Lyn came back in, holding her phone.

"What, no record albums?"

She wrinkled her brow. "They're in the garage. No one listens to records anymore."

"We do," James said. "Better fidelity."

She shrugged. "Well, this won't last long, but we needed a soundtrack to get his rant started."

"A rant?" James nudged his shoulder, a slight smile on his face. "Never heard you rant."

"Dad goes on a tear about the music. The Beatles broke up in 1970, Simon and Garfunkel followed—so it was the end of an era. And it always starts when he hears this—" She swiped her phone to turn up the volume.

The vibrant yet muddied sounds of Stevie Wonder's 1973 hit, "You are the Sunshine of My Life" spilled forth from the mobile. It sounded even worse than he remembered. There was something liquid, almost treacle in texture, to the music. Synthesizers cloaked the tones. And the platitudes in the lyrics made him ill.

"You are the apple of my eye…"

"I loathe this song," Robbie began. "It's not the memories it brings back—those are bad enough, mind. But it reminds me of being in a cave with sparkly lights whirling around."

"They played it at dances," Lyn said quietly, as if providing a commentary.

"Instead of playing the music that was halfway decent—Pink Floyd's _Dark Side of the Moon_ or much of anything by Bowie or Elton John, we got this bland crap from the States as if it was cool. You know what songs we heard? "Muskrat Love." Carpenters. Eagles. Barry Manilow, Rod Stewart."

"I thought you liked Rod Stewart."

"Your mum liked Rod Stewart. And that fellow with the underwear."

"Tom Jones. Women would throw their underwear at him."

James barked a laugh. "I did not know this. I always thought of the seventies as Joan Armatrading and Fleetwood Mac--"

"Okay, point for you. And Cat Stevens, yeah. Black Sabbath."

"Look at you," James marveled. "Heavy metal. Would've pegged you as a Jethro Tull fan. Emerson, Lake, and Palmer."

"ABBA." Lyn said quietly.

"Your mum liked ABBA. 'Dancing Queen.' "

Lyn broke out in a grin. "I know. She used to sing along. And you liked glam."

James eyes widened. "Mott the Hoople? Ziggy? T-Rex? Did you have the platform shoes and campy—"

Lyn pulled a single photo from the box as if she was presenting a treasure.

Robbie smiled to himself. 'The Man Who Fell to Earth' —The Robbie Lewis interpretation. Some party he went to. He was wearing black platform boots, skin tight black trousers that clung to his arse—he looked ace.

"Oh, my." James breathed in imitation of George Takei. "May I make a copy of this, Lyn?"

"Take it." She grinned. "I've got it on my mobile."

"What's it doing on your mobile?" Robbie asked. _What could possibly interest you in that picture?_

"Look at your expression." She accessed the photo and zoomed in on his face. "You look just like mum did in her photo."

And there it was, that look. Accepting some part of himself and the way he saw the world. He'd never noticed, never realized why Val had kept that photo of him, so obviously different than he was in every other picture. But he could see it now.

The moment of individual triumph over society's set rules and internal restrictions.

He met James eyes. Knew that he'd seen it too.

+++ 

James was staring at the photo, sitting on the edge of the bed in the guest room. " 'Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.' Probably the only spiders I've ever liked."

Robbie stretched out, hands behind his head. "You are the sunshine of my life."

"Can't believe you hate that song," James pulled up the lyrics on his iPhone. He quoted: 

> You must have known that I was lonely
> 
> Because you came to my rescue
> 
> And I know that this must be Heaven
> 
> How could so much love be inside of you?

How could you not like that?"

Robbie closed his eyes. "Never got past the first dulcet notes. Minute I heard it, I'd bolt. Maybe if it was covered by, I dunno—"

"Bowie?"

Robbie sighed. "It wasn't that bad, really. The era. There was just so much uncertainty, change."

"It's like that for every generation," James said gently, stretching out beside him. He rolled to his side, propped himself up on an elbow. "Lyn likes me."

"'Course she does. She loves you. So do I. Was there any doubt?"

"Never. If I protect you from hearing that song, will you always be there to protect me from killer spiders?"

Robbie chuckled and rolled over to throw and arm around James. He nuzzled the juncture between James's head and neck. "I'll always stay around."


End file.
